Glint of Glee
by staceycj
Summary: Spoilers for 4X04. Who is happy about the changes in the Winchester's lives? One shot.
1. Chapter 1

"I've saved more people in five months than we do in a year." Dean's eyes stung. There were few things in his life that Dean had been proud of. One of them was that he was able to save innocent lives from the supernatural, and here he finds out that his brother, in addition to being smarter, is also better at hunting demons and saving the innocent lives that were forced to host them. Not to mention that a demon was better at it.

Since returning from the dead, it had become a struggle to fit back into his old life. It was like he was two sizes too small for his clothes and everything that he had once fit into was too big, bigger than they had been when he left, and he felt like a child trying to wear his daddy's clothes. Sam was bigger, the hunt was bigger, and everything was bigger than he remembered.

Sam's words just confirmed everything he felt. He didn't belong here anymore. He didn't know where he fit in the world. Once, not too long ago, he fit in with his brother. They were two sides of a coin. Sam had replaced the other side of the coin. Sam was stronger than he was, he had been right, when Sam had died at Cold Oak, he simply shut down and made a deal to make sure his brother would live. Sam said that he had done everything he knew how, but Dean didn't believe him anymore. If Sam could lie about something this big than something as inconsequential as his attempts at recovering Dean's lost soul could easily be fabricated.

"Well then you guys go ahead and keep doing that." Dean said, voice thick with emotion, and gruff with sadness.

"Dean. I didn't mean it…"

"You meant it. That's fine Sam. I thought when I came back that I needed to be with you." Dean stopped packing for a second and laughed bitterly. "No, actually I thought that you needed me. Wow. I was so wrong there."

"Dean..I do…"

"You can let go of the charade now Sam. It isn't benefiting anyone anymore. I get it. I shouldn't have tried to force myself back into your life. I left you and I shouldn't have expected to be able to just force my way back into your life. You and Ruby go right ahead and save as many people as you can. I will only slow you down. Cass should never have saved me. Should have just left me there. My life was over. Not worth the trouble." He said and finished packing his duffel and started towards the door.

"Bye Sammy."

"Dean, wait, no." Dean shut the door behind him. Sam was frozen to the spot, his heart hammered in his chest, tears tumbled down his face. So, this was what it felt like to be left.

"Looks like we're free to do what we want Sammy." Sam startled, turned and found Ruby in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, Sam could have sworn he saw a glint of glee in her eye.


	2. Let Sam Come

Author's Note: I REALLY REALLY thought that this would be a one shot. I'm going to be known as the author who can't write a simple story. Several people asked about more, I thought about it and here it is. Enjoy.

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Sam stood there in amazement, mouth hanging open and eyes wide. Dean left him. Dean had never left him voluntarily. Sure Dean had died and gone to hell, been gone for four months, but he hadn't done it on purpose, he hadn't wanted to leave Sam in a world swimming with evil. But now….now…he'd been back mere weeks and he was leaving him. Leaving him voluntarily, leaving him because Sam had lied, because Sam was doing something that he had promised never to do, the promise he made on the day Dean died, broke that promise, and was consorting with demons. Sam turned to the demon standing by the wall and suddenly was disgusted, disgusted with himself, disgusted with her, disgusted with his choices, with everything. Ruby pushed off of the wall and sauntered over to Sam. Sam suddenly wanted to send her back to hell, take a hot shower, scrub the demon off of his body and run and find Dean. "Why don't we go and get that other demon that we were going to get before we were interrupted."

Sam closed his mouth, tears flowed down his face. "No. I have to find Dean." he said and started for his duffel bag. Ruby put a hand on his arm. Sam turned.

"He doesn't want to be found Sam."

"I don't believe that. I have to make him understand. I have to apologize. I have.."

"Sam. He doesn't want to be around you anymore. Didn't you get that loud and clear? He walked out on you Sam. I say leave him alone. Don't worry about it. We were doing just fine for those months he was dead." The word dead struck Sam in the gut and he wanted to double over. Flashes of his brother being ripped to shreds, screaming, Dean never screamed, and dying, eyes open, scared, tortured, haunted, soul in Hell, and he left to fight in his stead. Those months hadn't been pleasant. They hadn't been tolerable. He hadn't been doing fine while Dean was dead. He had barely held it together. What in the hell was she talking about?

"Get off of me. Don't touch me. Leave me the hell alone. I am going to go find my brother."

"Sam. Come on. You are doing what you were destined to do. You are sending demons back to hell. You are powerful. You were embracing it. You were doing it so well. It felt good remember?" she enticed. Enticing. Yes. She was like a snake charmer and he was the snake bending to her every will, listening to her song and believing it, and she was going to snatch him from his basket and kill him, or make him into something he wasn't, something Dean hadn't taught him to be.

"Get off of me before I practice my sending demons back to hell thing on you. Because so help me God, I will kill you if you dare touch me or come looking for me again. Just go back to hell where you belong bitch." Ruby laughed.

"You'll come looking for me again soon enough Sammy."

"Don't call me that."

"Whatever." And just like that she was gone. Sam hurried through packing and ran out determined to find his brother.

Dean found himself standing in front of the grave he crawled out of only weeks ago. "If I'm so important God, why doesn't my brother listen to me? Why does he lie to me? I've always trusted him. Trusted him with my life. Now, I don't trust anything. It is like my whole world was just taken. Why didn't you let me suffer? Why? At least then my life meant something. Now…" Dean wiped at his eyes.

"You have a purpose Dean." Dean swung around to face Castiel.

"Then what is it?"

"I can't share that with you."

"Damnit! Why did you bring me back?! You knew what my brother was doing. Why didn't you just take care of it yourself instead of making me see it? Huh? I didn't need to know what he was doing. I didn't."

"You did Dean."

"Why? So I could go back to feeling like this?"

"Because you are the only one who can make a difference in his life."

"Ruby seems to be doing a find job."

"He is still following your orders."

"No he isn't. He's working for the other team now."

"You once told him that the reason you guys do what you do is to save people, so they won't have to suffer."

"Yeah."

"He thinks he's doing that."

"But the price is too high the way he's doing it. He's going to sell his soul to the devil doing it this way."

"This is why we asked you to stop it."

"But I don't know if I can."

"You can. If you couldn't we wouldn't have rescued you." Dean blinked twice heavily and Castiel was gone. His phone rang and he startled. He took it out of his pocket saw Sam's name on the display and he turned the phone off. He needed a break. Let Sam come look for him for a change.


	3. Return

AN: Thank you for reading this one. It's done now! Thank you!

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Sam hadn't slept in weeks. He had called every single contact he could think of, and on his end Bobby was calling in favors right and left. Between the two of them they couldn't even find a trace of a black 67 Impala anywhere in the continental United States. Sam had tried all of Dean's usual haunts, he tried looking for hunts that would have peeked Dean's interest, he had tried tracing him by his cell phone, only to find that Dean had disabled the GPS and there was no way to track his movements. He even called every single motel he could get a hold of and asked for all of the alias that Dean usually used. He found nothing. Absolutely nothing. Dean had pulled a Houdini act and he didn't want to be found.

After the first week of looking for Dean, Sam hadn't been able to hold down much food, if he ate he threw it back up. Worry was a constant state, and he even found a gray hair sticking up amongst his thick chestnut hair. It was so uncharacteristic for Dean to do this. Had Hell changed his brother so much that he was willing to leave him, leave him in this panicked state, and not even call Bobby?

It had almost been a month and this day was no different from the previous thirty. Sam was on his sixth cup of coffee, running on less than two hours of sleep, and frantically searching his laptop for any information that might be useful in searching for his brother. He ran a shaking hand through his hair and sighed.

"I could help you with that." He jumped and had the knife out faster than you could say 'demon' and it was at Ruby's neck before she could blink. "You don't want to do that Sam."

"Why not?"

"I can help you find your brother." He let out a loud bark of laughter.

"Yeah, I've heard that line before."

"No. If I recall the line was 'I can help you SAVE your brother' save and find are two completely different verbs, so no, it wasn't the same line."

"Shut up."

"Or what? You going to kill me with that knife? Why don't you just pull me out of this body? Wouldn't that just be easier?"

"Sometimes easy isn't the right way."

"It was while Dean was dead." The knife bit into her throat and for a second, she was worried that he might actually kill her.

"Well it isn't anymore."

"You can find Dean you know?" she asked as blood trickled down her throat.

"I am going to find Dean."

"You can find him and get sleep." He paused briefly and that hesitation allowed the demon to keep talking. "You can find his soul. You can destroy all that is from hell, and he is from hell now, so you can find his soul without too much effort, all you have to do is think about it."

"I will not use my powers against my brother."

"I didn't say AGAINST him. Geeze Sammy…" the knife bit into her neck a little deeper. She giggled out her nerves. "You could just find him and draw him to you."

"I'm not using my psychic crap anymore. I will not do that again."

"It would make finding your brother so much easier."

"Easy is not how my brother taught me to do things. He taught me that sometimes the hard way is the best way."

"But sometimes…." Sam's phone went off. He thought about ignoring it, but the thought that it might be someone with some kind of information on his brother won out and he let go of the possessed girl and answered his phone.

"Sammy, you weren't doing something you would regret were you?" Dean's voice came smooth and easy across the phone line. Sam's legs went weak and he grabbed the chair he had been sitting at.

"Dean."

"Yeah. We need to talk. I'll be at Bobby's in a day. Meet me there."

"Are you okay?"

"Go to Bobby's. Or aren't you listening to me anymore? Is that part of the using demon powers thing?" Sam swallowed, trying to keep the tears at bay, the rebuke hurt.

"I'll be at Bobby's." his voice quiet.

"Good." The phone clicked off.

Sam glared at Ruby. "I'd get the hell out of here before Dean gets here if I were you."

"I'm not afraid of your brother."

"You should be." Sam growled. "Now go away." Sam yelled.

Sam was waiting on the front porch with Bobby when the Impala pulled up the drive. Sam would have been on top of his brother if Bobby's hand hadn't stopped him and held him back. "Let your brother do this on his terms." He whispered. Sam, with barely contained energy waited for Dean to emerge from the car and slowly amble up the stairs. A quick survey of his brother yielded that there was no damage to his face or hands, and that he was significantly more tan then when he left Sam alone in the motel room a month ago.

"You okay?" Sam blurted before saying hello.

"I'm fine. You okay?"

"Fine."

"Good." Dean licked his lips. "I need to know where I stand with you."

"What?" Sam asked startled that this was how they were going to begin this conversation.

"I need to know if I'm important in your life any longer. You moved on, and I didn't allow for that and I just jumped right back into the role I had before I spent time down under. So, I first need to know if I am wanted or needed in your life anymore."

"Yes." Sam choked out. "Yes. I prayed for you to come back every single day you were gone Dean."

"Then I suppose I need to ask where you want me."

"What are you talking about?"

"Cass says that I'm supposed to keep you from going down this path. I can't do that the way I used to. I don't know you anymore. I thought I did, but I don't. Truth of the matter is, that neither of us are the same man we were before I went to hell or before the deal. So, I can't be your older brother anymore. I have to figure out what to be to you now. You have other forces in your life that are more powerful than I am." He pinched his nose and sniffed. "I'm not used to that."

"I want you to be my big brother."

"No you don't. You don't want what I have to offer. Or you wouldn't have spent so much time lying to me."

"I lied because I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Of what you would say."

"Then why did you do it?"

"Because I had to."

"No you didn't. There are other ways of taking care of demons."

"But those ways kill the victim." Sam licked his lips and wiped a tear from his eye. "And I wanted to save them. Because…if I saved them…"

"You would be changing your destiny?"

"No. Because I could save someone else from having to suffer with the loss of someone they love. Because it was like I was saving you." Sam said finally and looked down and tears streamed down his long angular face.

"Sam. There wasn't anything you could have done. We tried everything."

"But I wasn't willing to risk myself for you. You risked your life, your soul, everything for me. And I wasn't brave enough to do the same for you."

"I wouldn't let you."

"That doesn't matter. It didn't matter. I've ignored your commands before; I should have done it then. I should have risked myself to save you. And by using the powers, by opening that part of me, I was risking my soul, I was risking everything to save them." Sam shrugged. "I was just trying to do something good with this curse. I just wanted to save someone." Dean touched his brother's arm. Sam looked up at him.

"I'm here now. You don't have to risk your soul anymore. Let me do that."

"Dean…"

"That's my job." Sam just starred at him and Dean smiled and for a second everything was all good.

The three men went inside the house and the demon in the brush laughed. They had the Winchesters exactly where they wanted them.


End file.
